Posts Tagged "development"
Making Mess
Success stories are a powerful trope of international development and conservation work. They structure the way NGOs, governments and companies engage with powerful donors and public opinion. They also smooth over complexities, efface failures, and ignore contradictions. They present ongoing situations as if they are done, dusted, and thus can legitimately stand as a lesson to others who seek to...
Read MoreWorlds Collide
(Gosh, that was all getting a bit emo there for a minute wasn’t it? Like a fleeting return to my early naughties LiveJournal days. What’s needed here is some decent deconstruction to chase the melancholy away. I know just the thing…) The tourists arrived in two open top safari cars, the sound of the over-powered 4×4 engines practically drowned out by the flickering of camera shutters...
Read MoreElephant in the Room
At the end of September world leaders from around the globe met in New York to discuss the progress that had (and hadn’t) been made towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – the set of eight international development targets agreed by all 192 United Nations member states in 2000 and that outline the ambitious overall target of the eradication of extreme poverty by the year...
Read MoreTown Mouse, Country Mouse
A subsistence fisher in Iloilo It is estimated that 44% of the population of the Philippines live on less than $2 a day, and that 80% of the poor live in rural areas of the country. Every year, thousands of these rural poor move to the cities in search of employment, improved living conditions and a better life for themselves and their families. Bing Bing, a subsistence farmer I met in Zambales...
Read MoreMicro-mythbusting
A Sari Sari store run by two microfinance clients, both PWDs Travelling to Iloilo at the beginning of the month in order to conduct an assessment of a microfinance programme that targets people with disabilities as clients, I was required to undertake a bit of a crash course in microfinance theory. Microfinance – the provision of small loans (and other financial services) to the poor to enable...
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